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  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Robotnik an idiot for creating the Pinball Defense System, or is it because he wants to watch Sonic squirm? Or both?
  • Annoying Video Game Helper:
    • The game likes to constantly remind you of your objectives if you keep hitting the wrong targets.
    • Welcome to the first level, Toxic Caves! CLUCK ALERT!
    • To make progress in Lava Powerhouse, you need to BUST DOOR FIRST or BUST CORK FIRST...
    • Showdown, the final stage, is particularly bad with this tr—BUST BLOCKS FIRST!
  • Awesome Music:
    • The Boss Theme is pretty awesome.
    • In Showdown, the game's harsh instrumentation actually works really well, as it's an industrial/metal tune that perfectly fits the grimy technological theme of the level.
  • Breather Level: The Machine, ironically. It's big and labyrinthine, but there are only two places to die (the twin drains at the bottom), so you can more or less relax and take your time. The Veg-O-Machine itself also turns out to be a Breather Boss... followed right thereafter by a Difficulty Spike up the Ro-butt-nik called "The Showdown".
  • Broken Base: It IS a Sonic game after all. Interestingly enough, one that shows the broken base happened long before the Adventure games. Whether or not you'll enjoy Spinball all depends on how you feel about the pinball zones in the main series. Some see it as a fun pinball-based spin-off that fleshes out the pinball zones of the main series, while others find it a gimmicky, luck based mess of a game. Even among pinball enthusiasts, there's a divide on whether this is a good pinball game or not, thanks to certain mechanics of the game feeling too luck-based rather than skill-based.
  • Catharsis Factor: By the time you reach Robotnik, you'll be more than relishing the opportunity to dunk him into that sinking volcano he's trying to escape from. Doing so is incredibly satisfying.
  • Funny Moments: One of the "did you know" facts in this game's "Museum" section in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection is unusually snarky: "A Pinball Defense System, Robotnik? That was your big idea to stop Sonic? Really?"
  • Goddamned Bats: The badniks in this game can't hurt Sonic but that doesn't mean they can't throw him off course.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • The game's infamously loose physics can be used to your advantage to clip into different areas. For example, it is possible to bypass the Bag Worm gates in Toxic Caves by grabbing onto the ledge.
    • By dying on your last life near the rightmost of the screen, Sonic will warp to the center and die again, but this will cause the lives to underflow from 0 to 255 lives. By doing this, you can practically have infinite lives, just as long you don't gain more balls to overflow it back to 0.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Plenty of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and Archie Sonic fans have been interested in this simply because it's the only game in the franchise to feature characters from the show and comic.
  • Most Wonderful Sound:
    • Collecting a Chaos Emerald presents the player with a very triumphant tune, especially if its the last one. The tune for collecting the final Emerald is also used when you get an extra ball.
    • When you defeat a boss, the music stops and is replaced by the boss's Post-Defeat Explosion Chain for a good ten seconds or so.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • Whether intentional or not, this whole game has given many a player nightmares, particularly for the dark level designs, difficulty level, and some rather... frightening sound effects.
    • Two of the game's bosses are a screaming robotic scorpion with Robotnik's face, and the Roboiler, a boiler with four Robotnik heads that vomit boiling lava.
    • Plummeting into an outlane (the outside lanes on a pinball table that guarantee a lost ball) without the safety features activated often triggers the Scare Chord, an accompanying Jump Scare message in the simulated DMD, followed by the mechanical laughter as Sonic goes into his Death Throws.
  • Porting Disaster:
    • The Game Gear/Master System version. Although the levels are remarkably similar compared to other Sonic the Hedgehog ports (not necessarily by its own merits), whatever physics existed in the Genesis version were thrown completely out the window. Worse is the platforming engine, in which Sonic has an innate tendency to get himself stuck.
    • While the Game Boy Advance port included in Sega Smash Pack managed to not butcher the controls, it suffers from some screen crunch, making it difficult to see much of anything in the direction Sonic is moving. Also most of the music is missing with the Toxic Caves theme playing throughout the game even on bosses which leads to some serious soundtrack dissonance (it's also highly compressed, resulting in several instruments sounding very shrill and buzzy, and doesn't loop properly).
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The steam valves in Lava Powerhouse used to get into the air so Sonic can bounce off of randomly spawning Clucks, and rise up to higher levels. They're very finicky while presenting no actual challenge or danger.
  • So Bad, It's Good: The options music, if not for the actual melody then certainly the instrumentation, which makes its harshest sounds its main focus.
  • So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus of the game is that it isn't bad and can be fun once you understand what to do, but at the same time, it is incredibly confusing and it suffers from poor physics, confusing level design, mechanics that seemingly rely more on luck than skill and a rather grating soundtrack.
  • Tear Jerker: For whatever reason, the original Game Over theme is depressing.
  • That One Boss: Robo-Boiler, the boss of the Lava Powerhouse stage. To start, getting to the chamber where you can destroy the Robo-Heads requires you to shoot up onto one of two platforms and then jump into the chamber and avoid getting blasted back out by the steam, which will send you back down to the flippers below where you have to shoot back up again. Then, each time you destroy a Robo-Head, you're ejected from the chamber and have to launch back up there again. Finally, unlike the other three bosses where draining will simply send you back into the main body of the stage, here you instead fall into a special room where Sonic is hanging onto an unstable chain and has 5 seconds to swing the chain and jump off. Fail to do the procedure correctly and it's an instant death. The chain will also break off if used too many times, meaning this is the only boss in the game where a drain can lead directly to instant death!
  • Unintentional Period Piece: The franchise has always been a clear product of the Mascot with Attitude era. However, STI doubled down on it here, from a few of the HUD's one-liners to robots Symbol Swearing when hit, to Sonic's scowling expression in the reflection of the bonus rounds. The soundtrack also features some rather gratuitous usage of the Genesis' distinctive YM2612 sound chip, to the point where the stock music cue that plays when Sonic loses a life sounds more like a whirring buzzsaw.

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